


I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself

by soulofair



Category: 30 Rock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-31
Updated: 2016-07-31
Packaged: 2018-07-29 00:47:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7663717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soulofair/pseuds/soulofair
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack decides to retire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally posted to LiveJournal (I remembered my login for my profile, a miracle in itself) and FFN. I'm now going through and posting my work here as an archive. Enjoy!

Of course, when Jack left, he and Liz had left things amicably. The last night Jack had in his office was spent with Liz as they shared a bottle of wine he’d been saving for the occasion. “Liz, I have no doubt, you will be in an office like this someday,” he told her with a bright smile on his face.

Liz smiled only to make him think that she wasn’t apprehensive about his departure. Of course, this was hardly the case. Jack was leaving after his fifty-year tenure at General Electric, retiring to spend more time with his daughter and to enjoy riding out the wake of his time at the company.

Jack had put his lavish penthouse up for sale and had purchased a nice home in Connecticut. He would be moving out of the city in less than a week, leaving behind the empire he’d created for himself.

Liz knew that eventually she would come to accept the facts of her reality and would be able to move on, but for now, she wasn’t sure where this left her. In the weeks to come, she would instinctively come up looking for Jack and would forget that he’d gone. And it wasn’t like he’d be coming back; he was gone for good.

So, when Jack popped into her office the following afternoon, a sad smile washed upon his face, Liz felt as though she had become Atlas, and Jack’s departure was the Earth upon her shoulders. “Are you going?” she asked quietly.

He nodded. “I feel as though if I don’t leave now, I won’t,” he admitted.

“I don’t think that would be a bad thing,” Liz replied. “I’ll walk you out.”

She and Jack walked from the writers’ room and through the convoluted passageways until they reached an elevator. Their silence was broken when they reached the elevators. “The last time you left, I called you thinking I was having Dennis Duffy’s baby. I hate to think what I’ll be calling you with this time,” she joked.

“You’ll be fine. I assure you of that.”

The ride down to the lobby seemed too short, but when the doors opened, Liz was torn between tying Jack up and keeping him locked in her office for the rest of her time at TGS, or pushing him out of the elevator and wishing him good luck. She opted for some happy medium, and exited the elevator with him. “You’ll call me when you’ve gotten to Connecticut and send pictures of the house, right?”

“Of course. But you’ve already seen the house, so there won’t be too much that will be different.”

“It will be your house though.”

Jack pulled Liz into a hug. He could feel her swallow back her tears, and her sigh. He found himself doing the same, and as he inhaled, he took in her scent. He wanted to remember what she smelled like so he could have someone recreate her scent so that he could have it made into a candle for his home office. Jack knew that he had to leave now or it wasn’t going to happen, and he’d have to start from the bottom again, since his position had been filled already.

One last goodbye, and he was on his way to the rest of his life. Liz stood on the sidewalk outside of 30 Rockefeller Center, wondering how she’d managed not to burst into tears. Her whole life was going to be different now, now that Jack, the guy who held things together in her life, was no longer there to answer her every beckon call. How would she manage?

And yet, within three weeks, Liz was shocked to find that she’d managed to hold it together just fine without Jack.

It was that realization that scared and saddened her the most.  



End file.
